What makes you happy
by AgentOfAngst
Summary: Raven makes an observation about happiness, and then a more important observation about her fiance's happiness.


**Hahaha, I love this. Stay tuned on Friday (Oct. 25th 2019) for more Beast Boy and Raven romance, with a spooky Halloween theme. Review if you want to.**

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It started as an offhanded observation. That it took very little to make people happy. And maybe those moments of happiness weren't the purest, strongest, most real moments of happiness, but they were moments of happiness nonetheless. Raven started out just testing that observation, forming it into a hypothesis, that you could make anyone happy just by discovering what made them happy and stimulating that in the most simplistic way. If you mentioned a musician in front of someone who liked them, or if a dog appeared in front of an animal lover, or if something on a billboard was funny or cute or familiar, a light would appear in their eyes. They would experience a slight instance of happiness. Happiness was easy. Fleeting, but not all that difficult to replicate.

She tested this on everyone in her life, the titans, strangers, mostly Beast Boy. Except he went by Gar now since they weren't exactly kids anymore. Gar Logan. Raven Logan. What a daunting thought, yet it brought a little bit of light to her eyes when she thought about the night -just the two of them under the stars- when he'd asked her to marry him. That was what brought her that fleeting happiness. She tested him more than anyone else, pieced together what brought him happiness so she could figure it out, so she could help make his life better the way he'd made hers better.

And then she started noticing something else, and her initial experiment about happiness turned into something bigger and more important to her. There was something that was more consistent at lighting him up than anything else, and he'd hold on to that happiness longer, long after the initial instance occurred. The first time she noticed it she wouldn't have thought much of it if it weren't for her hypothesis. But after the first time she noticed, it became a trend.

They were at a restaurant, nothing fancy, a place that served pretty okay vegetarian food alongside stuff Raven found palatable. They were deep in conversation, probably wedding plans although that seemed irrelevant to Raven when she thought back. They'd been talking in between bites and suddenly something distracted Gar for a second. His head turned ever so slightly, his eyes, now lit up more than before, followed the sight of a small child, giggling in her mother's arms. Then Gar's eyes were back on her and it was like nothing had happened. But something had happened. Something else made him happy.

And so it became an experiment. She watched his face whenever there was a little child around. Accidentally left out a magazine that had a baby on the cover. Watched him, time after time, light up a little. And, faced with the results of weeks of careful testing, couldn't pretend she didn't understand the results. He was consistent, a near-perfect score. How she chose to interpret that data was pretty open, but one thing seemed obvious, and it would be easier to face it now.

She was alone in her apartment when she let herself say it out loud the first time.

"Gar wants kids." She'd just wanted to make an observation on human happiness, but it had grown out of control. Gotten more complicated. Her fiance seemed to want children. She wasn't sure what she wanted. This thing they had now, this marrying and moving in together that they intended to do, that was scary enough. Add a child, two children, three! That was terrifying. And Raven hated to feel afraid. So she was wary to approach the subject with Gar, in case her theory was wrong. Wrong or right, it would be better to know how she felt on the matter before she brought it up.

And so more tests commenced. Now instead of paying attention to Gar's face when they were around small children, she paid attention to her own gut feelings. She learned several things. She learned that kids seemed to be reckless, confusing, uncontrollable, and loud. She learned that she had very critical, analytical although not outright negative feelings towards children. She learned from listening the phrase, "It's different if they're yours," which she wasn't sure she fully believed. She learned she did not light up like Gar and that she was trying to condition herself to light up anyways. She learned that she was still afraid.

It didn't seem like it mattered what she wanted deep down. She wasn't really letting herself figure it out. She was trying her hardest to make herself want what she assumed Gar want, without asking him or weighing the pros and cons for herself. It was incredibly stressful and frustrating to feel so lost, with a destination she didn't know how to get to and wasn't sure that she wanted to reach.

Contrary to popular belief, Gar wasn't an idiot. He could act stupid, often, but he wasn't the witless class clown people believed him to be. He noticed Raven's mental anguish and reached out.

"What's going on, Rae?" He took her hand and squeezed it, looking her in the eyes with loving concern.

"I... I have a weird question," Raven started.

"You can ask me anything." He wrapped an arm around her as they walked, making any excuse to just spend casual time together..

"Do you want kids?" That floored him.

"Do you?"

"Doesn't matter, have you thought about it? Do you want kids or not? Yes or no."

"Yes." He didn't really hesitate. He just knew. Why couldn't she just know? Why didn't she feel strongly, one way or the other? It was so frustrating. He saw the frustration on her face.

"What about you, Rae?"

"I don't know. I really don't know. I… I figured you wanted kids, so I've been trying for a long time to want kids and I don't know if I don't want kids but I just don't know anything, except that it scares me." Gar positioned himself to face her.

"You don't have to want kids. I know it's scary, and we don't ever, ever have to have kids. It'll be okay. But don't forget that this," he locked their fingers together, "was scary too."

"So it's okay not to know? Not to want it, right away?"

"The only thing that matters is that we're together," he leaned forward and captured her lips before whispering, "you make me happy." As if he knew about the test all along. A test that they'd both suddenly passed.


End file.
